A booming tech industry means less affordable housing for the middle class in San Francisco. A steady flood of high-wage workers is spilling into the already crowded Bay Area.

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- A new boom has come to San Francisco, and housing prices have skyrocketed in the past decade to new highs. As tens of thousands of white-collar jobs are created each year at companies such as Apple (AAPL), Facebook (FB) and Google (GOOG) (GOOGL), construction cranes dot the skyline to keep up with the demand for housing

That success, though, comes at a price.

The city, long known for its artistic spirit, has become prohibitively expensive for some creative types, middle-class workers and nonprofit organizations. Many are fleeing the city's rising price tag for less expensive, but less accessible, suburbs.

The Bay Area's population has continually increased, thanks to job creation. San Francisco has grown from 776,000 people in 2000 to 805,000 in 2010, and the Bay Area as a whole has grown from 6.7 million people in 2000 to 7.1 million in 2010, according to census data. Job creation, mostly in technology, has fed the demand, with 33,400 jobs expected in 2015 and 45,700 created in 2014, according to data from real estate brokerage Marcus & Millichap.

Although these changes have boosted San Francisco's economy, "the flip side is that we have not seen the kind of new supply that would help absorb the population growth," said Carol Galante, professor of affordable housing and urban policy at the University of California, Berkeley.

Housing prices can be a barrier to living in San Francisco. In 2002, the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment was $1,524. This year, it's $3,040 a month, according to Marcus & Millichap. The Bay Area has three of the nation's top 10 priciest rental markets -- San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland -- according to a 2015 national report from rental Web site Zumper.

Employees who work for the aforementioned tech companies and others once may have settled in Silicon Valley itself, but office space construction has far outpaced residential construction in some sections of Silicon Valley. Thus, workers have migrated to the urban heart of San Francisco, Galante said.

"There is room, but there is not necessarily the political will to enable it to happen," Galante said.

As tech workers with large salaries moved into the urban core of San Francisco, the demand for high-end housing increased. Companies created employee-only bus routes and expanded office space into areas with little corporate development, such as the traditionally artistic Mission District.